I want to use this medium to present to you the record of my service as the Honourable Minister of Aviation and most especially to respond to your request for memoranda on the N19.5billion Aviation Intervention Fund and other related issues.

When faced with the incessant air crashes that bedevilled the aviation sector between 2005 and 2006, President Olusegun Obasanjo redeployed me as the Honourable Minister from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the Ministry of Aviation. My redeployment took place in November 2006. Before my appointment as the Minister of Aviation, the country had experienced no less than five plane crashes in Nigeria with the attendant loss of approximately 400 lives within a period of one year. This was not only unprecedented in peace time but was also a national tragedy and disgrace and was widely acknowledged as being so. The plane crashes were, in no particular order, the Bellview crash, the Sosoliso crash, the military plane crash (in which some of our brightest and most distinguished generals were killed), the ADC crash and the crash of a small plane that took place in Kaduna. As if to add a rather sinister twist to the whole saga, virtually all these crashes took place on a weekend. This was a perplexing coincidence and was indeed by a curious and cruel twist of fate. It was clear and obvious to the discerning and spiritually sensitive that the demons of hell had been invoked and loosed into the Nigerian airspace in that one year.

In all these crashes distinguished Nigerians from virtually every geo-political zone, all age groups and every walk of life lost their lives. The Sultan of Sokoto, his son, Senator Maccido and his grandson were amongst those that were killed. That is three generations of people were lost from just one family alone. Many other wonderful souls perished including some of my personal friends such as Senator Sule Yari Ghandi, Alhaji Mohammed Waziri, General Nuhu Bamali, Pastor Bimbo Odukoya, Mrs. Bimbo Babalola, Chief Omotayo, Chief Igwe and no less than 60 beautiful and talented children from Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja who were on their way home to Port Harcourt for their holidays. Everybody was affected by these air disasters and that period of utter despondency, sadness and despair was a defining moment in the history of our country. The whole nation was in a state of shock and fear and, of course, the aviation sector itself was in a state of utter trauma. It was in this situation and this volatile atmosphere that I came in. It was indeed our very own “annus horriblis” and many homes and families mourned for their beloved yet lost ones.

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